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I recently found this cool fraction picture book in my mom’s old teaching files. I don’t have directions, but the pictures seem pretty self-explanatory. Using different common fractions cut out on different colored paper, students made a bunch of cool pages. Not bad for integrating math and art!

This page (quick tips on how to cut out each piece) was also in the file:

If you wanted to allow for more creativity, you could have students cut out a bunch of the fraction pieces and let them make whatever they wanted. Then have them label the size of each piece and tell you the total whole pieces they used in their picture.

Here’s a fun list of ideas to encourage math during the Christmas or Summer Break:

Challenge others or challenge yourself. Online math strategy games at Calculation Nation provide a safe environment for elementary and middle school students to challenge themselves and challenge others. Games involve fractions, factoring, symmetry and comparing perimeter and area! Give your kids graph paper and tell them to create a dream house up to X square feet. To be extra challenging, limit the square footage of a single room.

Play strategy games with friends and family. A great way to spend quality time. Games such as Contig, and other free board games. Play as teams while learning so you can talk about strategy and then move playing individually. Try something like Scrabble, but skip the calculator when totaling each player’s score.

Talk to your children’s teachers before the break. Ask questions that show you are concerned about their development and maintenance of mathematics skills and fluency. For example, ask, “What do you see as my child’s strengths and weaknesses in math? What could we do while at home to develop or improve his/her weakest areas?” There are probably fun class activities or games that you could replicate a home.

Create a number book with your child. Use this template with your preschooler or kindergartner and have them decorate each page with pictures, stickers or stamps (or even glue beads or macaroni) that show the number on the page. For more advanced students, ask them to write expressions that equal the target number. For example, for the number 6, they could write 3X2, 10-4 and 2+2+1+1. Also consider having them write and illustrate a story that deals with math or numbers.

Do projects with your child. Bake cookies or work on a home improvement project. Real-world applications of mathematical ideas, especially measurement, are everywhere! If you are stringing up lights, work with them to estimate how many sets you will need and calculate the total number of lights used. If you are baking cookies, have them figure out what is needed to make a double batch. Asking your child what they’d like to cook or build; they’ll have more buy-in on the activity that way.

Exercise your body; MATHercise your mind! Take in a sporting event, even if it’s only on TV. Keep track of yards gained and lost from running versus passing plays of their favorite football team or the shooting percentage of their favorite basketball player. Work with them to make comparisons between two of their favorite players and display it graphically. Check out the lesson connecting rate of movement to football on Illuminations, appropriate for middle and high school students. If you’ve got kids playing on a sports team, consider having siblings keep the stats on their sibling or sibling’s team.

Have a problem of the day. Work through one new problem before or after dinner each night. Figure This! has an awesome assortment of interesting problems with hints and solutions, so you don’t have to be a math wizard to facilitate! Let older siblings write the problem of the day for younger siblings. Be sure to have them teach their younger siblings how to find the answer.

As a family, track your calorie intake or your finances. Are you consuming more food during the holiday season than you would otherwise? Are you spending money on gifts? Becoming aware is important in establishing control. You may also consider how much time each day you spend on each activity such as watching television, eating, sleeping. Ask your kids to predict how much time is spent on each activity. Make a graph. Ask neighbors or cousins to track their time on each activity as well. Then compare both family’s experiences. Finally, brainstorm how you can manage to fit in alternative activities to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Seek out a volunteer opportunity that appeals to both you and your child. From cooking for a shelter, to collecting food for a food drive, to collecting coats for the needy, there are lots of opportunities to estimate and use math to project how much your efforts mean to others. Ask your child to look for math in the activity. Write about it in a journal or draw a picture.

(Many ideas in this article from are from NCTM) Share your ideas by commenting below!

There are tons of ways to introduce fractions. But no matter how you do it, you need to help students understand that you’re looking at part of a whole. Here’s a page I’ve used with my class (focusing on the numerator). I do this type of activity before I ask kids to draw both parts (numerator and denominator). Hope you’re having a fabulous school year!

When I taught 6th grade, my kids really struggled with finding equivalent fractions, percents and decimals. This is a topic we had to continue reviewing and working on all year long. Here’s a Valentine treat for you: a FREEBIE! (I know, I know… everything I post is free! And that’s because I’m a BROKE teacher, so I assume other teachers are broke like me and can’t always afford to buy materials!)

Ready to introduce fractions to your class? Then you’ll need lots of practice identifying the parts of a fraction (numerator and denominator). Well,then consider this freebie! This page asks students to shade in the numerator of the collection. Simple, I know, but it’s a building block in the process of being able to illustrate a complete fraction. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas! (I love getting to say that! It’s my favorite time of the year, by far!) Anyway, my freebie for you today is a free worksheet for equivalent percents and fractions. I chose common fractions, since those are the ones it’s really helpful for students to have memorized!

Converting percents and decimals is easy as PIE… especially around Thanksgiving! But seriously, practice makes perfect. For me as a young student, this was just something that eventually clicked one day; the more practice, the better. Here’s a page of practice with equivalent percents and decimals with a Thanksgiving theme.

Learning fraction, decimal and percent equivalents is KILLER! That was by far one of the hardest topics for my kids. I made this sheet to help kids practice fraction-decimal equivalents using a simple number line.